Silvio Abrategraduated in Telecommunications Engineering in 1999 at Politecnico di Torino, with a thesis about the distribution of satellite television over an in-building fiber infrastructure. Since 2001 he was with the Optical Networks Division of Alcatel S.p.A., in Vimercate (MI), working on SDH and WDM networks especially for Telecom Italia and South America's providers.

Since February 2003 he is a senior researcher at Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, with the role of coordinator of the PHOtonic Technologies and Optical Networks Laboratory (PhotonLab) held by the institute in cooperation with Politecnico di Torino. Silvio Abrate is author or co-author of over 100 journal and conference papers, 3 book chapters and holds 4 U.S./European patents.